


Journalistic Integrity

by havocthecat



Category: St Trinian's (2007 2009)
Genre: Boarding School, Female Characters, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Gen, Gen Fic, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-13
Updated: 2012-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 21:57:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havocthecat/pseuds/havocthecat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Denise is a St. Trinian's girl.  Former Head Girl, in fact, and she's leveraged that to become a journalist known throughout Britain for exposing incompetence at the Ministry of Education, corruption all over the world, and even a secret society of Parliamentarian misogynists.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Journalistic Integrity

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted [on Dreamwidth](http://havocs-cry.dreamwidth.org/46337.html). Thank you to lady_krysis for betareading!

"Always strike first" is the St. Trinian's school motto, and that's why Denise is always to be found front and center in every throng of reporters.

Denise is a St. Trinian's girl. Former Head Girl, in fact, and she's leveraged that to become a journalist known throughout Britain for exposing incompetence at the Ministry of Education, corruption all over the world, and even a secret society of Parliamentarian misogynists. Denise makes sure to credit the girls at her alma mater for their work, of course. Not even a former Head Girl wants the entire current population of St. Trinian's coming after her hell-bent on revenge. Emphasis on hell, especially if the emos have taken to making pacts with demons again.

Queen Elizabeth had not taken kindly to the treasonous implications of a secret society that actively worked to ensure male rule of the country, after all, and so the former Sir Piers Pomfrey finds himself stripped of his rank. Denise does love mentioning that in her c.v.

Almost no one thinks that a St. Trinian's girl could become a nationally renowned investigative reporter, but those are all the sorts of people who don't understand that blackmail, theft, and the occasional bit of arson are useful parts of being an investigative reporter. They're part of a St. Trinian's education too, which means Denise became proficient at a very early age.

Shakespeare is on the curriculum now, after the headmistress had learned that she's descended from her - and that Shakespeare was a pirate. This, of course, means that piracy is on the curriculum, and some of the girls spend a term or two on the high seas. As it turns out, field hockey sticks make an effective substitute for a cutlass in this day and age.

"A spot of piracy livens things up, that's what I always say," Miss Fritton says, as Denise shows her satellite pictures of the St. Trinian's galleon. She lights her pipe and leans back in an overstuffed chair with threadbare cushions, and then uses the pipe to gesture at Denise. "Though I'm afraid the first years are going to find the nearest lake and build another ship. We'll have a bloody fleet if this keeps up."

"Have you tried telling them there are slim pickings these days?" Denise is recording the conversation, but the tape is getting magnetized the instant she's done writing out her notes. Or it's getting locked in a safety deposit vault buried in three inches of concrete. One can never be too careful - or have too much blackmail material.

Cassette tapes may be difficult to find in the twenty-first century, but there's no possibility of connecting them to the internet or having your mp3 player hacked by an enterprising young St. Trinian's geek looking to make a name for herself. Denise got her start in the '80's, but she knows how her clique operates these days. That story about uploading a virus to an alien operating system wasn't just a movie, and it wasn't Americans who'd done it.

"Lord, no, then they'd come back on a rampage. My old bones couldn't take it." Miss Fritton is the kind of headmistress that can't often be bothered. That's quite all right, of course. At a school like St. Trinian's, the teachers often get in the way. Denise knows that Miss Fritton agrees, and so she stays out of the way quite on purpose.

"Tell me, Miss Fritton, how does it feel for St. Trinian's to receive positive acclaim after being the bane of the Ministry of Education for at least fifty years?" Denise smirks as she asks it.

Miss Fritton chuckles, a hearty sound that doesn't convey nearly as much as Denise wishes. St. Trinian's interviews should always have a scandal, and Miss Fritton is, for the moment, rather staid. "I always said my girls would show the Ministry a thing or two."

"Or ten," She clicks off her recorder, gathers her things, and then stands. "This was lovely, Miss Fritton, but I'm due to interview the new Minister of Education in about--" She checks her watch. "--ten minutes. I'm going to have to drive rather fast."

Not to mention the cameras are due to come back online any moment now. Denise would like to be off before that happens, and it's going to take at least half an hour to make it off the grounds without the First Years going all Lord of the Flies on her, bless them.

She shakes Miss Fritton's hand, and then walks out down the hallway, past portraits of generations of Frittons. The one constant at St. Trinian's: A Fritton always runs the place. Denise wonders if Annabelle knows she's being groomed to be headmistress one day.

Denise has plans to be right there when it happens. Miss Fritton's a holy terror, but Annabelle? Oh, Annabelle is going to have the whole country wrapped around her little finger before they know what hit them.

\--end--


End file.
